From the Colorado Rural Partnership website:

"Join your colleagues for this three-day institute to investigate how today's paths meet at the crossroads of life 75 years ago. Using New Deal Arts programs as the context, you will gain new insights into Depression-era America and comparison to today's economic and cultural conditions; in-depth knowledge of primary sources from the Library of Congress website as well as local treasures; plus teaching strategies and resources to add to your toolkit. If you teach arts, humanities or social sciences-related classes at any grade level, or are looking for ways to enhance literacy in any subject area, you'll want to be a part of this institute!"

Note: "As an advanced level Teaching with Primary Sources program, this institute requires completion of the Essentials Exploration foundational workshop."

This cross-curricular program helps teachers incorporate economic reasoning into their high school American history courses. Program instructors provide economic explanations of pivotal historical events. Participants learn interactive teaching strategies that incorporate the actual circumstances of historical periods of study.

How did World War I affect politics in the United States? Why did the prestige and power of American business dramatically increase in the 1920s? What explains the remarkable cultural ferment of this period? What place did religious and spiritual values assume in the United States during the 1920s? How did concepts of citizenship and national identity change in the decade after World War I? How did women and African Americans struggle to advance social equality? How did modernizing and traditional forces clash during the decade?

This institute will explore these and other questions through history, literature, and art. Under the direction of leading scholars, participants will examine such issues as immigration, prohibition, radicalism, changing moral standards, and evolution to discover how the forces of modernity and traditionalism made the 1920s both liberating and repressive. Participants will assist National Humanities Center staff in identifying texts and defining lines of inquiry for a new addition to the Center's Toolbox Library, which provides online resources for teacher professional development and classroom instruction.

Participants in this workshop will travel throughout the Delta as they visit sites where significant events occurred. They will discuss and learn about issues involving civil rights and political leadership, immigrants' experiences in the Delta, the Blues, the great migration, agriculture, and the Mississippi River, among other things. They will sample Delta foods, visit local museums, and listen to the Blues. Field trips will roam as far as Greenville, Greenwood, and Memphis, with stops in between.

The seminar will explore the lived experience of ordinary Americans during the colonial period of history. Topics will include family and household, community organization, making a living, religious belief and practice, witchcraft and magic, and shared patterns of human psychology. Material culture will also receive considerable emphasis: domestic architecture, furnishings, and the natural environment. Mornings will be devoted to lectures and discussion; afternoons to field trips and library work.